Facebook Gets Ready for the 500 Million Users Celebrations

The tech media is still very preoccupied with Facebook’s latest privacy debacle, another one in a long line of similar situations with little consequences for the social network. It looks like this will be no different. While a few have, publicly, decided to close their Facebook accounts recently, there are plenty coming in to fill the numbers. In fact, the social network may be close to announcing another major milestone, the 500-million-user mark, according to the All Facebook blog.

The social network is planning a celebration of the milestone, it is said, something it doesn’t normally do. It’s not every day that you cross 500 million users, though, so there may be a little more motivation than any of the other milestones the site has passed along the way. Actually, it’s not any day that anyone crosses the 500-million-user mark, Facebook would be the only site in existence with this kind of audience.

Facebook should make the announcement in the coming weeks and the celebrations would coincide with the three-year anniversary of the Facebook Platform. And the fact that the social network hasn’t made much of a fuss about the previous big numbers it posted, in quick succession, should make this an even more special ocassion.  

The social network adding another hundred million users is hardly surprising these days, but Facebook had only 200 million users about a year ago, which should put things in perspective. It reached the 300-million-user milestone last autumn and continued its rapid growth, especially outside its native US. Facebook announced it had 400 million users in February this year.

With current growth trends, Facebook should reach 600 million users by the end of the year. By that point, it should be the biggest site on the planet in all major metrics, unique visitors, page views, engagement, and so on. The company’s revenue is not in line with its size yet, but Facebook should bring in at least $1 billion this year and the figure is expected to grow rapidly over the coming years.